Thursday, February 12, 2015

Bearing Fruit

I started this Blog with a piece about how we are thinking and talking about the park differently, how we are creating new opportunities for visitors to enjoy the park and trying to be more welcoming. One way to measure whether we are having an effect is to review the numbers of visitors who experience the park. In 2014, Petrified Forest visitation grew by nearly 30% to 836,919 visitors.

While we will take some credit for this growth based on the new opportunities
and attitude we are offering, it is also true that some of the growth can be
attributed to low fuel prices, an improving economy, and comparison to the year
before, which included the government shutdown. In fact, had the shutdown not
occurred, visitation in 2013 would likely have been in the area of 700,000
visitors and 2014 would mark the third year in a row of visitation growth.

Digging a little deeper, October and December of last year were records for
those months. The single year increase of 29.8% was the largest since 1956. For
the year, the total was the largest since 1995.

We think this one-year result is important—and it’s only important to us if
there is a component of it that is responding to our actions. Low gas prices
and an improving economy are nice but beyond our control. If we can attribute a
portion of the growth to our actions, it means that we have the chance to make
a national park experience at Petrified Forest relevant to more people. If we
are relevant to more people, we validate what we do. If we are relevant to more
people, we help our local communities who are more eager, in turn, to help us. If
we are relevant to more people, we gain stature in the public eye and the
public willingness to further protect the park grows. If we are relevant to
more people, we improve our chances of perpetuating the park’s protection
through our political system.

Visitation numbers are not the only feedback mechanism we have but it is the
easiest to track. We are also keeping an eye on press reports, comments we get
directly from visitors, comments visitors make on sites like Trip Advisor and
Yelp, and our own social media accounts. We are getting positive feedback in
all areas. Our annual summer survey of 400 park visitors in 2014 to assess how
visitors feel about the facilities and services we offer was our best in recent
memory, exceeding the 8 year average in every category. We are excited to be
getting this positive feedback and will continue to do our best to provide a
good national park experience—not to grow the numbers but to grow our relevance
to the American public.